"'Kamasutra' connotes sexy, but what is the so-called book of love, anyway? In an impressively researched, charming volume, [James] McConnachie traces the Kamasutra's history from its creation by the 3rd-century sage Vatsyayana as a guide to the good life for urbane dandies. It does, indeed, list acrobatic sexual postures, but most of it concerns manners and the arts, as if Martha Stewart were collaborating with Hugh Hefner. Little being known of Vatsyayana, McConnachie describes the genre to which the Kamasutra belongs and places it in its original cultural context before turning to the man most associated in the Western mind with the Kamasutra, the central figure here, adventurer and author Richard Burton, who brought the Kamasutra to England despite draconian censorship laws. He sponsored the translation and provided notations that were as scandalous as (in some cases, more scandalous than) those of the original. A relatively brief summary of the Kamasutra's continuing popularity, especially during the free-love sixties, concludes McConnachie's work."—Booklist